Another lengthy absence

I'm sick :(

At least it's not the flu, but colds are nothing to shake a stick at. Try it. Shake a stick at one. Won't do you any good. Just make your arm tired. Anyway, I'm on the mend.

Let's see, what's new. Well, my best friend is preggers again. Bun in the oven! That'll make me an auntie twice over. Evil auntie. Just as the first one, who is now four, no longer makes startling and unpleasant odors and can actually carry on a coherent conversation (she actually has a great vocabulary), another one comes along and the process starts all over. Another couple years of diapers, screaming fits, and exhausted friends irritable from lack of sleep. The joy of birth.

There's the artist, Alan Clark, who I discovered at the art show of a small local sci fi convention when I was about 15. I got a few of his prints, and gathered a few more over the years when I could find them. The other week I found he had a website, so I ordered a whole bunch of prints. The next morning he called me up and thanked me. That's like getting a phone call from your favorite writer, thanking you for being a reader. I was chuffed all day long.

Evil Dolly's Toy Recommendation of the Day: Giant Microbes! They're plush! Give your friend the gift of an earache. What better way to say I Love You than with a fuzzy Mono? Tell your boss exactly how you feel with an endearing, big-eyed ulcer bacteria. Their site is giantmicrobes.com. They're cute!

A New Year

Well, let's see. It's been a couple weeks since I've written. Mainly that's simply because nothing very interesting has been going on. There was xmas, of course, which I spent alone because it was all snowy and icy here. Watched the snow start to come down and a dense flurry, and by the next day everything was white. It was pretty cool, even tho I was trapped here on the hill for 3 or 4 days. It reminded me of being a child... when we'd go out and sled down the hill for hours, come inside and throw our soaking clothes in the dryer while we drank cidery tea, then back into the still-wet clothes to go back outside and do it all over again. At least I didn't slip on the ice and give myself a concussion like I did a few years ago. I don't mind lotsa snow, cause it doesn't knock out my electricity like ice storms. This was like the 9th white xmas here in 100 years. And yet, just a week after, it's up in the 60's, and the ground is all sweaty.

My sister and her husband did arrive in town after xmas, they got held back due to snow. They always stay in the guest bedroom here. I decided to have my few remaining relatives come over for a visit.. so I had to cook for 10. It was a bit crowded over here. It's funny to see my aunt nowadays. She was always a demure, quiet, motherly type. Now in her 50's, she's become a heavily-tattooed biker chick. Didn't bat an eye at the rings imbedded in my ceiling, either.

Japanese

There's lots of cool japanese art and picture sites out there. Unfortunately, I can't read any of it. I tried to teach myself japanese years ago.. but was eventually stymied, mostly by verb tenses. I need to find someone who reads fluent japanese to translate these things for me. Anybody out there?

On another note, got that extended return of the king dvd today. The movies are somewhat poignant for me, as my dad was always a huge lotr fan. He was excited about the movies and we went to see the first one, but he never got to see the last two. Things left undone.

Tree time!

I'm so sore. All over. Yesterday I woke up with an inclination to get all creative and stuff. So, I went and got a paint sprayer, a gallon of black latex housepaint, and a fake xmas tree. Branch by branch, I sprayed that tree down and hung it up on a clothesline in the backyard. It took 3 hours to spray the whole tree... but now it's complete. I have a black xmas tree! Yay!

Foolishly, I put the lights on before testing the string, and half of them don't work. I'll have to replace the whole lot. I also need to get some dark red ornaments. The only ones I've seen so far are those cheap orange-red ones, and that just won't work. I'll try to get a picture of it up somewhere when it's done.

... o gothmas tree, o gothmas treeee... how mordant are your branches....

o.. m.. g..

Just got in from a walk. Really windy today and a cold front came in so it's quite nippy out. Ears hurt. Anyway, the sky was really cool.. just a purplish gray with smudges of darker purplish blue clouds. About all the leaves that can fall have fallen by now. I don't like being cold, but I enjoy the stark beauty of winter. Bare branch silhuoettes on a whitish gray sky. Just lovely. I could stare at it for hours.. if I didn't get so cold.

Got another fake today. After hours of 'interviewing' her, turns out she wouldn't talk on the phone. Afraid of being stalked. If you're interested in putting your life in someone else's hands having them control you utterly, a phone call is the least of your concerns. So I turned on my webcam to see if that would calm her down. She didn't have a cam on her end, but it seems that 'she' had left 'her' microphone on. Startled guy talking in a high-pitched voice. Classy.

I never, ever talk to someone for long without phone confirmation. I don't care if you haven't paid your bill or if you have a crippling phobia of tangled phone cords.. if you want to be someone's slave for real, you find a way to get to a phone. Otherwise, to me, you're a guy jerking off. Is that cynical and jaded of me to not be trusting? Sorry. That's the way it is.

cubby hole

Decided today to clear out this closet/pantry that's in a hallway underneath the stairs. It's about 10 feet deep and gets smaller all the way to the back, as it's underneath the stairs. It's been full of junk-mostly cleaning stuff-for ages. It's also where all of the xmas stuff has traditionally been stored. I got it all and nice and emptied out. I stood there and realized that an eyebolt put into the studs way in the back would make for a nice, dark, cozy cubbyhole for someone. Just stick em in there, lock the chain, and let em relax. I like it!

iii'm dreaming.. of a whiiite.. chameleon?

So, it's about that time of year. Happy to say most of my xmas shopping is done (Note, I intentionally refuse to type 'Christmas' the majority of the time. You can see where my mind's at). I haven't put up any lights or a tree in many a year.. not since I was a child.. so I thought I'd put up a few lights this year. Just to spruce things up. I bought some lights, shimmied up the ladder to find a whole ton of wet leaves, sticks, acorns, and about an acre of very healthy moss growing on my roof. I have nothing against moss. I like moss. I'm a moss kinda person. But it just won't do to have it on my roof. So I spent about an hour and a half scraping and sweeping, and was thoroughly exhausted by the time it was done. Then I leaned over the edge to start hanging the lights, which I'm pleased to say went off without misshap. I hope they look okay in the dark. To add insult to injury, about halfway through the sweeping, I got an old song stuck in my head which I had to keep singing the entire time.

see the chameleon
lying there in the sun
all things to everyone
run, run away

You try getting that out of your head once it's firmly wedged in there.

On another note. Went with some friends to a xmas comedy show that's put on yearly by a local acting troupe called red octopus. Bizarre but funny. It's held a pizza place/micro brewery.. the kind of place where local bands try to make a name for themselves and there's amateur paintings (mostly all bad) for sale on the walls. Now, I'm not much of a public drinker. In fact, I pretty much only drink to get pretty well buzzed, which is very rare and almost always in private. There are few things more boring to me than sitting around a little bar table with friends for a couple hours while they merrily down pitchers of beer, waiting until they get tired and drunk enough to disperse. It's kind of like waiting in a doctor's office for a long time. Except the doctor's office has more comfortable chairs.

Oh yeah, also went to a local craft show that's held every year. It's a pretty high quality of craft stuff, and I got some nice things to add to my hoard of objects. Being me, I certainly do feel out of place at those things, though. Poor, friendly folksy people from the Ozarks confronted with weirdness like me. But at least I got a pretty porcelain egg with roses painted on it. I do go for that ultra-femmy, grandmotherly stuff, sometimes.